Friday, March 01, 2013

Disengaged

I really haven't been writing much lately. A lot of that is due to the fact that I just don't feel engaged in anything I am playing. I have TERA, The Secret World, The Old Republic and World of Warcraft installed.

TERA - My lancer is 45 or so, now. It's still fun, but, I don't know, something is missing. As you go higher in levels, it feels harder and harder to get a full group to kill things.

The Secret World - I restarted playing this when it went F2P. I haven't gotten out of the first zone yet. For some reason, I'm finding the regular gameplay very difficulty. I'm not sure if it's because my builds are bad, or for some other reason.

The Old Republic - Still in my guild, we're still spinning our wheels a bit. I think we're hovering around our skill level, and aren't really progressing. It's not really helping that the raid makeup doesn't seem very stable as people are constantly bringing in alts and similar shenanigans.

As well, I dislike the Section X daily zone. It's very annoying, some quests have abysmal drop rates, and it feels like you have to wade though heaps of useless enemies to get to your real objectives.

World of Warcraft - I finally got my weapon, and then haven't logged in since then. I still have to do the legendary quests. The issue is that I'm in my old guild, and I'm the only person in that guild. I think the cure here is to find a new guild and raid with them instead of running LFR. But I'm not sure if I actually want to do that.

(deleted first attempt because my cut-n-paste decided to eat the line breaks. ><)

Tera - I haven't tried that one yet, but I wonder if it is having a drop off of higher level characters as the f2p folks stop playing (or slow down as the game gets harder)?

The Secret World - I'm still mucking around in Kingsmouth. I felt the starter bit for the Dragons was pretty poorly done. (Give me a tutorial mission where you give me abilities and then take them away at the end? Not too smart.) I think Funcom's problem is that they when they did the quests for TSW they got too enamared of ARGs for everything and not just for Investigation quests. This game really feels like you need a second monitor with a browser open looking everything up all the time. Personally, combine that with the ability to eventually learn all the skills in the game (though you can only use a few at a time) and you get the situation where you feel like you're spinning your wheels without any direction. If they had taken the idea Guild Wars 2 used and an obvious story thread to follow, plus a few stock 'archetypes' for abilities I think they would have kept more folks subscribed. It also wouldn't have hurt if they had put something more interesting in as the starter zone. Zombies and the Lovecraftian/King atmosphere are both rather overused at this point in time. I eventually want to push through the content and see everything, but I feel like I'm fighting the game to see it and not working with it. :sigh:

The Old Republic - Right now I'm just leveling characters to 50 to see their class stories. With the new expansion coming I'm not worried about doing anything with my other 50s. Leveling characters is a lot of fun because I'm seeing how Bioware intertwinned the stories among all the classes, plus I love seeing the little callbacks to the KotorR games. This is the game I'm spending the bulk of my time at the moment. Being able to do what I want, when I want has really invigorated my desire to log into an MMO and play.

World of Warcraft - I was pretty burned out by the end of Dragon Soul, but I hung in for my guild to help give it some leadership stability. I've leveled three characters to 50, but with all the dailies and the alt-unfriendlyness of the expansion, I've pretty much gone into hibernation with it. All I'm doing is logging in to see if I can get my other binding from Baron Geddon once a week. My guild is still raiding, but with the changes in raiders due to folks leaving at the end of Cataclysm they picked a raiding time that doesn't work for me. That's ok with me, but it does mean the normal "I need to be on and prepared to raid" efforts aren't keeping me logged in. I have done LFR and subbed in on some normal mode runs, but I have to say that T14 is pretty 'meh' for me. That may be just DS burnout lingering, but it may be that I'm very tired of trying to stay on Wow's Red Queen's racetrack of progression.

I guess this is all a long-winded way of saying pick the games, single-player or MMO, where you're likely to have fun without feeling too committed and go to town with them. As far as SW:ToR goes once the expansion hits it should energize everyone to see all the new content. Everyone just has the 'end of expansion' blahs because Bioware has struggle to deliver new content. They seem to be finally getting on track to release content in a timely manner. WoW, on the other hand has become the generic MMO that everyone knows and plays. This isn't bad as we need games that are like 'comfort foods'. They aren't what you want all the time, but they are there when you don't want anything fancy. If you want to raid more in WoW you can use this to be very picky about finding a group that is the right fit for you.

Alternately, you could leave your lone guild for a place to just hang out with no expectations of raiding. I say this because it doesn't sound like its the raiding you're inclined to miss, but I could be reading that wrong. In any case, we don't know each other very well but you'd be welcome in Business Time if you just wanted friendly faces. We have Rhidach and unfortunately Voss might threaten divorce if I invite another paladin to the guild. :D I'm okay with this though.

I would recommend Dark Souls. Having been in the same position as you - disengaged with MMOs - I have found it a breath of fresh air.

It's an action RPG - don't be put off! There are some more caveats: if you play the PC version, you will need to use a gamepad and patch it with DSfix. Still, don't be put off! I always hated gamepads until now, but this game is a revelation.

It is a deep, difficult game with exceptional melee combat, fantastically designed levels (very differnt from the standard), and an engaging and mysterious open world which you have to discover for yourself - it's not presented on a plate. Lots of different weapons, all of which handle differently and need skill to master. Very well calibrated death penalties. Good opportunities for role-playing. Lots of alternative ways to deal with the challenges which you will face. A novel and interesting (if imperfectly executed) on-line side.

All in all, a game which is both fun to play and fascinating from a design perspective. Give it a go!